Time for Change

I'm watching Barack Obama kick John McCain's ass in the current election. It's giving me hope as I watch our pessimism and culture of fear change to optimism; the glass-half-full weltenshaung. Fear has been haunting this nation for eight years, and I'm sick and tired of it. I'm not afraid anymore, including that day in 2001, September 11, when I awoke to NPR's announcement that "something" had hit both World Trade Center Towers. I spent the next several hours riveted to the television. There was no morbid curiousity, only grief in those hours.

But now I'm feeling hope. I'm no longer focused on getting Osama Bin Laden (you know the one;l the one who isn't in Iraq, the one who isn't in Iran... but we forgot where to look for him); I'm focused on getting this country back to the 'right' again. We are a nation built of tough, resilient people. We have always been strong, willful people who will fight for whatwe believe in. And we win, when we unify and dignify each other of us to imagine each individual being strong, willing and ABLE to fight for what we believe in. Not extremism, not individualism, and NOT adversarial "us versus them" mentalities that threaten the very fiber of what makes us Americans -- all of us, African-American, European-American, Latin-American, Asian-American, Middle Eastern-American, East-Indian-American and others. We are all part of the fabric that builds this country, and we have to be STRONG and fit and ready to fight for this country and for ourselves. Are you ready? I am.

That brings me to next diatribe in this blog, a blog I've sadly let go for a few months.

I'd been doing a lot of hard circuit training with my personal trainer -- dare I say, my mentor, Stein-Erik Skaar. This guy has both beat me up and encouraged me. Mostly, he's been teaching me -- how to stretch my ideas of endurance, my limitations, and what I can do to overcome my body's weakness -- the weaknesses I've allowed to creep in over the last 15 years. He's taught me a lot about what I can endure, what I can overcome, and how far I have to go. I've lost little in the way of real weight (30 pounds), but my muscles speak for themselves. I've gotten strong and lean(er) and have no doubts about my physical prowess. I like circuit training, in fact, I think circuit training is absolutely the way to go for newbies getting into physical fitness. There's only one caveat: to do circuit training safely, you need someone to show you how to do it. You do need someone to help you through a circuit, to discuss what you are working, how to use the right form to avoid injury, and how to conquer weaknesses. I've been doing circuit training for eight months now, and I've lost over 30 pounds, and likely gained 15 pounds in muscle. My heart beats like it has a purpose; no longer am I worried about a heart attack. My lungs feel as if they have expanded, though of course they haven't. What my lungs have learned is to take in as much oxygen as they can and disperse it as efficiently as possible, through my strengthened heart, and into my large muscles. This, folks, is how circuit training positively effects your body: you engage you heart, your lungs, and your large muscles in order to create a uniquely working team with your entire body.

You start with stressing the muscles, this also stresses your cardiovascular system -- which in turn, returns the oxygen to those large muscles (in particular your legs, but also everything else). In the end, the lungs are heaving to keep up with the oxygenation needs, but your heart, if it's in shape, is pumping as best it can to keep everything well oxygenated. It all works; it takes time, a little pain, a bit of discomfort... and in the end you know your body has worked for you. And it only gets better.

I had a recent conversation with a so-called trainer in a local gym who had no idea what I was talking about... he kept taking me around the Nautilus machines, telling me how isolation weight training actually helped leach toxicity from your muscles. He asked me to do some adductors on a Nautilus machine which isolates only the inner thigh. I complied, and since he'd put on about 40 pounds of resistance, I did about 40 of them (without any stress at all) before asking him if I could then stop. I tried to explain that circuit training, in my world, involved whole body movements, inculding solid core exercises that work out the whole body in a holistic manner, which better suits a person's ability to do every day activities, as well as building strength and endurance. He just didn't get it and kept carping on about the benefits of isolated muscle development. Let me tell you, in some respects, he is right. You can reap huge benefits from Universal type equipment, and you can do it without supervision or training (for the most part), but what you don't get is the overall body improvement -- cardio, vascular and muscular -- that you do from whole body circuits. Nautilus-type systems serve to build individual muscle groups; this isn't bad, but is does nothing holistically for your body, and adding in bits of cardio work isn't going to do it either. To get the best hard-hitting work, you need to both muscular involvement with cardio work, which is whole body involvement, not muscle isolation. This, the Nautilus system does not provide. Unfortunately, to do this you do need someone to train you with form and function; form is most important in order to avoid injury. A personal trainer isn't always necessary, but it certainly helps. There are many step-by-step guides that can help, but you must be careful. Movements as simple as lunges or squats can incur injury if done incorrectly, so it's important to pay attention to whatever is used as instruction.

So. Two weeks ago Stein pretty much set me up for something I've been resisting: Cross Fit. This is a workout regimen that requires 100% participation at 100% capacity for the duration. Let me elaborate: you take a workout and you do it hard, furious, and as fast as you can. In the end, what matters, is the time it takes you to get through the entire workout. It is fucking Savage. I submitted to this workout because I could tell that Stein wasn't going to let me off, and for the last three meetings, we've been doing Cross Fit. It kicks your ass, it beats you down, and in the end YOU WIN. It's like fighting yourself until you are completely beat down... but once you're done, you know no one can beat you down ... except you.

It's like taking that ass-kicking, and kicking it's ass right back.

Check out crossfit.com. It's the shit.